[Info-vax] Safer programming languages (and walking :-) ), was: Re: 8-bit characters

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 11/16/2021 1:43 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2021-11-15, Arne Vajhøj <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>> On 11/15/2021 1:34 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>> On 2021-11-14, Arne Vajhøj <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> But Ada did fall out of fashion.
>>>>
>>>> There are probably many explanations for that, but my guess
>>>> is that the complexity of the language turned out to be a
>>>> problem.
>>>
>>> There's also the problem that the Ada compiler situation overall is not
>>> good and that Adacore's Community Edition version of GNAT is pure GPL
>>> with no runtime exception. See https://www.adacore.com/community for
>>> details.
>>
>> I know about that restriction. It has been discussed before.
>>
>> If they really wanted it then they would pay ACT for the commercial edition.
> 
> Unfortunately, that's still an issue when you don't have that problem
> with other languages such as C and C++.
> 
> People might want to explore other languages (including Ada) but there
> are plenty of production-quality free language compilers available today.
> 
> Adacore's policy is a barrier to attracting those types of people.

Maybe.

But for very serious use then paying should not be a problem.

And for just trying it out then GPL should not be a problem.

GPL being unacceptable and not willing to pay is a group in between.

>>> There's still the FSF distribution of GNAT (at least for the targets
>>> it supports) however.
>>
>> Unfortunately then most GCC dists does not include gnat.
>>
>> Supposedly m2 is going to be in standard GCC dist going forward,
>> so maybe Modula-2 instead of Ada??
> 
> Interesting. I didn't know that, thanks.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Modula-2-GCC-Mainline-Hope-2021

>                                           I wonder if uppercase
> keywords will be an optional feature instead of being mandatory ?

I doubt it.

> I wonder if you will be able to do bare metal coding with it ?

No idea.

Arne